Alexandra Blum, ‘Rising Spring’, watercolour on paper, 23 x 30.5 cm, 2025.
Although I have drawn the wooded hills of Charlton visible from my studio window many times, I was taken aback by the arrival of spring in in early April 2025. It seemed to spread gradually over the hill, creating a feeling of buoyancy, as if not only the trees but the whole city were reaching upwards.
The emergence of thousands (millions?) of individual leaves felt both fragile and monumental. Due to the pace of spring, I had to speed up my looking process, but the image was still made over a couple of weeks, tracking the green as it travelled through the hillside. I wanted each painted tree to be as specific as possible in terms of its particular green and particular shape as it transformed from bare branches towards full leaf. I was also surprised by the pink/orange colour of some of the trees. I later discovered (in Tristan Gooley’s fascinating book ‘How to Read a Tree’ ) that this was probably due to the pink/red colour of bud scales, which encase the buds but are discarded as the leaves burst through*.
* Tristan Gooley, 'How to Read a Tree', Hodder Press, 2024, pages 206 & 207.